Sunday, May 03, 2009

Snapping twigs off the tree of knowledge

It was a cold night in London, back in July 2008.

We were having a pub meal at the Falcon in Clapham North, when Buzz’s flat mate Si started telling us about “Space Docking”.

Turns out his workmates had been discussing it during the day, and so Si decided to get an exact definition of what the act entailed. One short text message later, and he provided us with a concise explanation of what Space Docking was.

I was surprised at the speed he could get his hand on such random trivia, so asked if he could clarify what a “shit blister” was. A brief text later, and he had the answer.

I was of course intrigued, just who exactly was he texting to get his hands on such knowledge?

Turns out it was AQA – short for Any Question Answered, a British text message service that provided customers with speedy answers to their questions. It was intended to provide people with train schedules, directions and movie times, but has proven to be more popular for those in search of random trivia.

As the title suggests, they will answer (almost) any question (they wont teach you how to make bombs for instance, or to quote the web site, how to poison London’s water supply). After a pint or ten, how could you not harass the poor bastards at AQA with drunken requests of information?

The shit we found out over the next few hours was invaluable.

You could fit 42 dog collars onto an adult Giraffe.

If you fell out of a plane cruising at 35,000 feet, you would be able to successfully masturbate once before hitting the ground. You would hit the ground halfway through your second attempt.

It would take 2,100,000 pubic hairs to make a tuxedo.

If Optimus Prime was made out of hot dogs, and fell into a swimming pool full of Dobermans, it would take two days for him to be completely consumed – as the dogs would need time to digest the meat.

It would take 16,000 bricks to build a prostitute out of Lego.

Your penis is quarter of an inch longer than Danny’s.

Though I don’t think Danny was too happy with that last answer.

I mentioned AQA while on a pub crawl in Belgrade, and it wasn’t long before we were snapping twigs off the tree of knowledge. This time the questions took on themes of causality and theology.

Q: If I went back in time five years and raped a younger version of myself, what would happen?

A: The consequences of raping a younger version would prove catastrophic. It would be devastating to both your younger self and your present self simultaneously.

Q: If I strapped a stray cat to either side of my head, and then head butt the Pope while he was taking a shit, would God be angry, or impressed?

A: God would neither be angry nor impressed. She has more important things to worry about.

Holy shit! God’s a chick! Just like in the movie Dogma. Not all of the questions were of an epic nature though, some were quite personal:

Q: What does Chuck’s dick smell like?

A: Chuck’s dick smells like a normal dick.

In case you were wondering, and I know some of you were.

Of course, the bubble had to burst eventually.

Coops and I were discussing how many human teeth you could fit into a suit of armor, and both sent off the question to AQA. Coops’ answer came back as “you could fit 102,000 teeth into a suit of armor” mine came back as “you could fit 15,000 teeth into a suit of armor”. Two wildly different answers.

I’d always liked to think of the AQA head office as a giant warehouse where all of the texted requests were reenacted in strange and fantastic experiments. But it turns out it was just a call centre full of people “just making shit up”.

Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

For those of you wondering what “space docking” Or “shit blisters” actually are – I’ll leave it to your discretion whether you want to look it up or not. For all I know, you are already familiar with the terms. In fact, some of you may have been space docking while reading this post.